Friday, January 04, 2013

A worldwide fraud ring has been cawt by Facebook and local police in the UK, Peru, the USA, and other countries who uncovered how the culprits secretly planted spyware on victims' computers to steal credit card and bank card details from unsuspecting consumers.

Major global Facebook Botnet taken down

A fraud ring worth around £525 million has been taken out of action by the joint efforts of Facebook's own security team and local police forces. Gadget Company Money4Machines says the fight against elite cyber criminals is ongoing

A fraud ring worth around £525 million has been taken out of action by the joint efforts of Facebook's own security team and local police forces in the UK, Peru, the US and a number of other countries.

The gang managed to steal the massive sum from Facebook users by secretly planting spyware on victims' computers that would steal credit and bank card details. Along with financial details, personal information with worth on the black market was also lifted. It's estimated around 11 million computers were infected by the ring's spyware.

"When you sell your iPhone to us, we will always run thoro data erase software on it. It's the same when folks sell laptop or tablet devices. Clearing malware is always part of the job, and it's pretty shocking how many people have things like spyware on their old laptop without knowing.

It's great for gadget recycling companies like ours to know handsets and computers are being made safer – cleaner technology encourages our customers to sell mobile phones etc. without worrying about third party data contamination issues - but it's definitely a cat and mouse game that's unlikely to end."

Cyber security is big business across the world wide web. Back in 2001, German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, estimated at least £24.7 billion was lost each year to similar schemes. These days, that figure could easily be quadrupled.